I chuckle at the people that think HomePod delay not a strategic move- hint-AAPL never misses their own guidance & they guided Best Q

I tend to agree with you but not for the reasons you may think. Along with boatloads of Apple products, I own some Amazon Echos. The Echo Dots are a small speaker that happens to also utilize voice activation and smart home capabilities. The highest priced Amazon Echo is $229, still over $100 less than the Homepod, and that particular Echo has video, too. Most of the folks buying this type of speaker are not buying the speaker because they sound amazing. They are buying them to work with their smart home devices. At less than $30 for an Echo Dot, I can easily put one in every room (and truthfully, I have). At $350, there are not a lot of folks that will put a HomePod in every room, and having one in every room is well worth the cost of the speakers.

I can do my grocery list hands free and when I notice the need, in any room of the house, and when I get to the store, it's already on my iPhone. I can Alexa to turn off the TV from another room. I can be in bed and tell Alexa to run the vacuum, or lock the doors, or turn off the lights in the kitchen.

Although Siri on the phone and the watch is very good, it isn'[t quite there yet, and like i said, the Homepod is simply too expensive to put in every room. I would love to see Apple do something similar, but I'm not sure they will.